


language barriers

by nebulousviolet



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Drabble, Gen, lowercase abuse, mental illness i guess?, surprise i’m alive, veiled reference to selective mutism, warnings for mentions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-15 00:43:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13601940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nebulousviolet/pseuds/nebulousviolet
Summary: neil thinks he will never learn how to speak, never learn how to listen.





	language barriers

**Author's Note:**

> oh wow. i’m not dead? it’s been a while since ive been in this fandom. i had a short flirtation with a multichapter fic that wasnt aftg that i quickly orphaned, and ive been in the coffin ever since.  
> but yeah this is a quick ten minute...thing about neil and languages and whatever. ik neil chose to study spanish at palmetto but he thought it was necessity ok let me interpret him in peace.

french is a hard language. neil does not learn the normal way; instead his mother buys him a dictionary and tells him to figure it out. he is not allowed to speak english. every word is like oil, rich and suffocating, and neil thinks he will never learn how to speak, never learn how to listen. he will be silent forever. but eventually, it gets easier. he becomes near-fluent. he can’t write the language, or even read it, but he can talk. he’s always been a loudmouth. at least he has this.

german is easier. for the most part, it sounds like it looks. the words are like english. there are rules and tenses and neil finds his voice a lot easier this time. if french was oil, german is water, slick and tasteless and simple. if mary hatford could be proud, she would be.

when neil has to return to america, he finds that english has changed. not fundamentally - the language is surely the same as he left it - but deep in his bones, it feels not right. mary slaps him so hard he bruises when he cannot pronounce words the right way. one day, a girl calls his accent weird, and he earns a cracked rib. after that, neil learns silence is golden. french is oil and german is water and english is lava, hot and choking. silence cannot help him, but it cannot hurt him, either. neil doesn’t talk for a year.

but when his mom dies, he has to say something. his accent is still weird and sometimes he says things in the wrong language but he has to talk, has to feel the bitter chalk of words on his tongue. neil has learned to detest speaking. language is a necessity, but also a curse. sometimes he expects to see bruises flowering whenever he fucks up, but mary is gone. he thinks he misses her. she could always speak when he couldn’t.

after the mess with riko, after a year from hell, kevin tells him he needs to learn japanese. “they’ll be able to discuss your murder right in front of you if they don’t,” he says and neil is ten years old again and can’t speak french and is drowning in words that are sticky as syrup. kevin is right, logically, but some part of neil thinks he is broken from not speaking for so long. he shakes his head. “i can’t,” he whispers, inadequate, the same way he repeats _i’m fine_ because there is a word in french and a word in german to say what he is feeling but english is too harsh and cruel for him to translate it. andrew listens in, ever the eavesdropper, but doesn’t say anything. two years later, kevin reminds him again that he should learn, and this time andrew steps in. “imagine what he’ll be like if he can run his mouth in four languages,” he says deadpan, but it’s for neil’s sake because he can’t do this again, he can’t, he can’t forget. and yes, he knows that normal people don’t learn to speak this way, but his mind just won’t let him.

eventually, neil makes his peace with words. he never liked humanities anyway (now there’s a metaphor), but he knows that history has its place and language its uses. and when andrew asks him to learn russian, this time he says yes.

and oddly enough, russian does not hurt the way the others did. it is a story of its own.

**Author's Note:**

> comment or i’ll give you all my flu and you’ll die n if u just give kudos then i’ll reduce it to a cold xx


End file.
